Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN – Shot-on-video Brit-flick from the early eighties that disappeared after some minor (in both senses) DPP notoriety. In it, a mysterious orphan is taken in on the doorstep of an unrealistic-seeming children's home, then runs riot with satanic intent. If the results look like a school project filmed with a camcorder from 1983, then that's actually pretty close to the truth, but it's a truth redeemed by scenes such as the one in which someone's violently stabbed in the leg and bleeds spurtingly over 'Smash Hits' type eighties pop posters. Make no mistake, SLC is no-one's idea of Friday night horror fodder except for those whose idea of a classy evening in front of the box equates to a few tins and a double bill of 'Invitation to Hell' and 'Tales from the Quadead Zone'. That said, I can do nothing but recommend a movie that features a finale as blisteringly psychotic as the one in question here, even if that amounts to little more than an attic, a strobe and some dude dressed as jesus – poundland Jodorowsky, to be sure. Great soundtrack too, fuzzed up punk and its own theme tune!
RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3 – Not seen for a while, new BD out, so, why not? It's pretty good. It's not amazing, it's Brian Yuzna, which to my mind usually means big-seeming ideas but slightly pedestrian delivery, but then again with something in the background making it all a bit cock-eyed and scrambled. Excuse my little prejudices, but that's how I've come to view his work (which, incidentally, I have learned to quite like). This was made back when I suppose he had designs on being a horror hot-shot still, although 'Society' had left the oven a while ago and 'Faust' was beckoning. It's a taut, well made B-movie that seems to want to explore edgy (for the time) themes such as body mod, S&M and self mutilation in the context of a doomed romance overrun with zombies. Part of the problem is that it takes quite separate sub-cultural tropes, crams them into one pierced bracket and uses them to window-dress what's essentially well-trodden ground, plus you get yawnsome cliches like the decent post-Nam tramp guy who lives in the sewer and is desperate to help out. But for all that, ROTLD 3 manages to evoke quite a nihilistic mood in places and features some reasonably harsh gore. It works, it entertains and it's enjoyable, although, with all that sex/mutilation/death material, the far more intense film it could've aspired to have been is nowhere to be seen.
THE SUCKLING – Grainy eighties low budgeter set in a brothel-cum-illegal abortion clinic, where a freshly expurgated foetus hits toxic matter and becomes a vengeful monster with a flesh-ripping fixation – bad taste? Forget it! Actually though, sad to report that 'The Suckling' is a bit of a wasted opportunity in some ways. This is the second time I've seen it, and, just before I bought the more recent 88 Films version, an ominous voice at the back of mind whispered “isn't that the one that's full of quite nasty potential but somehow ends up as quite boring despite itself?” Inner voice, you were so right. 'The Suckling' is a disjointed mish-mash of ahm 'tonal variation', but, given it's also a threadbare piece of indiefied dreck from years ago, it really wasn't a problem for me that it couldn't seem to decide whether it wanted to be a sex comedy, a Troma wannabe or an alien rip-off... sometimes inconsistency works for me in the context of 'grindhouse'. No, the difficulty was simply in the pacing and lack of tension – cardinal sin of 'people trapped in house with monster' flicks is committed again and again here, namely lots of wandering around and bickering in the name of 'drama'. Shame, because the bits that were done right come through – the trashy tastelessness of the premise, the gothic look of the foetus's descent into the sewer, the seriously freaky 'return to the womb' ending and subsequent bleak madhouse conclusion... all good stuff. Not a winner, but somehow still worth seeing.
TONIGHT SHE COMES – Latter day indie horror about a bunch of lads and lasses down't woods (dunno why I'm talkin' Yorkshire, they're all from Brooklyn or Orlando, dog). Before they out-sass each other with their modern day witticisms, it transpires that there's a naked dead girl lying in a ditch – a problem, but then a greater one emerges when it turns out that naked dead girl is up and walking, and soon covered in blood. 'Tonight She Comes' takes the satanic backwoods route, and we spend the greater part of its duration in the company of the surviving bright young things and a rural bother-sister duo, who seem to hold the key to the unfolding ritual-horror shenanigans. I found 'Tonight She Comes' pretty confusing, which is not a criticism at all as I don't care whether films, especially genre films, make sense or not, although I can understand why that matters to some. It would be a shame if TSC, which seems to be proving a bit divisive online but is surely destined to be a fan fave, was passed over because of its refusal to be more linear, because it's satisfyingly gory and intense when it needs to be, and just, y'know, interesting. Does it hark back to the eighties in a crowd-pleasing way? Maybe, although not obviously, and is that a bad thing anyway? If you watch a lot of contemporary horror releases, you'll know that a lot of them are mediocre fodder for the Asda bargain bin – that's the sad, brutal truth. So it's always nice when a genuine, full-on horror film comes along, and TSC is definitely that. Recommended. |